A Little Sickness on the Side
by Goblin Cat KC
Summary: A look at April's relationship with Donatello. More specifically, a look at a 27 year old's relationship with a 15 year old. Although physical relations are mentioned, it is only in passing, with no detail. HET April:Don


**A Little Sex on the Side**  
by KC

**Summary**: a look at April's relationship with Donatello.  
**Warnings**: a look at a 27 year old's relationship with a 15 year old  
**Pairing**: April/Don

He's recently turned fifteen.

She's twenty-seven.

Sure, she knows she looks younger, twenty-three tops. But she's past grad school, looking at cutting edge positions to restart her career. Maybe the techno-organic position at Veertech, or the cybernetics assistantship at Warrens-ReBuild.

Working with Donatello is far more thrilling, however. The rawness of his design, the inspired genius of his schematics and the teenage imagination firing his engineering--it's all missing from corporation work. Even Baxter Stockman, for all his madness, lacked Donatello's sheer joy, and only Donatello creates complex robots out of alien circuitry and junk.

His exhilaration is addictive. And he brings that to the desk, too. He has to bring it to the desk because they never make it to his bed. It's too far from the drawing board. All that energy burning inside him brings out her own, and they end up sprawled over his work.

He doesn't like it when she sweeps things off the desk, however, so she pushes things carefully to the sides--his pens and pencils, his half eaten Snickers and a plastic figure of some video game character she's never heard of.

Sex with him is wonderfully animalistic, if a little unfocused. He so new to this--he tries to flirt for too long, or else his mind is too much on the computer and not enough on her--that she practically has to lead him by the hand. He learns quicky enough, at least the technical aspects of what goes where, but he still hasn't learned to balance his approach. He either stops because something brilliant has sparked in his mind, or else he wants to talk afterward.

Which is fine, talking is fine of course. Talk talk talk. It's pleasant. Like a cigarette. But he's still caught up in that childish rush of newness and inexperience, and she's past all that. He talks about silly things, video games and movies she would avoid because of screaming brats and silly plots, talks about his creations like they're alive. He still hasn't learned to pace himself. He throws himself into each invention and feels too strongly the hurt when they don't work like he expected.

She learned early on not to criticise his work too bluntly. Like a child that will defend his toys if the cool kids say they're stupid, he'll talk with wounded honor about them, as if they're his little babies. Really, she stopped thinking about tools and machines like that when she was fifteen or so. She's past that.

Unfortunately, he doesn't kiss all that well. She either has to coax him into it or else it's clumsy and unpracticed. Well, of course. Who else would he practice with? He hasn't met anyone else to try it on. Angel's the only other girl they know, and she's only like ten or eleven. Way too young.

His youth is a little annoying sometimes, colored by that immature aggression. When he's angry, he's a sullen teenager in a snit. Those little fits can undermine his long periods of maturity, but she's willing to put up with it. His naive trust more than makes up for it.

He's never had the life experiences she's had, at least not yet. He hasn't had a friend betray him utterly, and she promised herself not to be the one that hurts him. She'd seen some of her lines of code stolen by a professor and published under his name, but she'd been a young undergrad who hadn't known any better. It was unfair, she thinks when she remembers it, how the older scientists could take such cruel advantage of the younger ones. She'd thought she was happy just working as his lab assistant. Looking back on it, she understands now how he'd hurt her. He probably hadn't thought of it as hurting her, but the memory ached all the same.

She promises herself that she won't ever do the same to Donatello. As tempting as it is--after all, his genius shows all the way down to the nuts and screws of his schemetics, and those small improvements can add up to recognition and wealth--she doesn't steal Donatello's ideas. He's her friend, after all, and he trusts her in his childish way. It's like holding a toddler's hand and leading him along. With a little sex on the side.


End file.
